Claire Armitstead (Opinion, 19 January) is right, of course she is (Book festivals are worth more than fees, 19 January), to say that book festivals are about more than fees for the speakers. Authors are almost always pleased to be invited to speak at a festival and will often subsidise the experience themselves in one way or another (by accepting expenses that are less than their costs, or fees that are exiguous, or, as has been the case too often, no fees at all). We all want the festivals we attend to be a pleasure and a success, and to encourage the sale and the reading and discussion of books. But what she fails to explain is why some festivals, including small ones, manage to pay their speakers while others, including the large and (as it advertises on its website) lavishly sponsored Oxford festival, do not. The Oxford festival has just announced that it will meet with all interested parties to discuss how to pay speakers, and good for the festival. But it won’t impress the authors it’s been refusing to pay in the past by referring to “an additional 15% in costs”. Paying the speakers shouldn’t be an “additional cost”: it should be an absolutely fundamental and basic cost, built in from the beginning. Festivals that do pay their speakers realise that, and make it work, and are respected and appreciated by authors in response.
Incidentally, I was not the president of the Oxford literary festival, as Claire Armitstead refers to me. Such a post does not exist. I am the president of the Society of Authors, which strongly supports the principle of paying speakers at festivals.
Philip Pullman
Oxford
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